The audio version of this story is AI generated and is not human reviewed. It may contain errors or inaccuracies. The Mississippi House passed several bills this week aimed at improving the quality of medical care in Mississippi prisons and developing stronger oversight of health care delivery.  ​​The bills, which follow an ongoing investigative series from Mississippi Today on the alleged denial of care in state prisons, are part of a reform package spearheaded by Rep. Becky Currie, the Republican House Corrections chairwoman from Brookhaven. A bill cleared the House Thursday that mandates the creation of hepatitis C and HIV treatment programs for people incarcerated in state prisons. The programs would be crafted by the Mississippi State Department of Health and the private company that provides health care to people housed in state prisons, which is currently Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, LLC. The bill also instructs the state to develop a plan to improve the health of female prisoners. Currie, who authored the legislation, said VitalCore is failing to adhere to the terms of its contract by not treating people incarcerated in Mississippi prisons with hepatitis C.  “They are treating 50 inmates a year that have hepatitis C,” she said. “The problem is, we have more than 5,000 inmates with Hep C, so doing 50 inmates a year is doing nothing.”  A report from Mississippi Today published in October revealed that only a fraction of Mississippi inmates diagnosed with hepatitis C receive treatment, allowing the treatable infection to develop into a life-threatening illness in some cases. It also showed that although the health department provided information to Mississippi Department of Corrections about how to access lower drug prices through the federal 340B discount drugs program last year, the agency has not yet taken steps to obtain the reduced prices.  Currie’s bill would require the health department to assist the state Department of Corrections in obtaining hepatitis C and HIV medications for inmates at 340B drug prices. Speaking to lawmakers Thursday, Currie argued that treating hepatitis C and HIV in state prisons is a public health issue, noting that over 95% of state prisoners will be released.  “Most of them are getting out and coming into a community near you,” she said.  Currie has spent the past two years pushing for reforms to health care in Mississippi prisons and scrutinizing the state’s contract with VitalCore, which in 2024 was awarded a three-year contract worth over $357 million.  Another bill authored by Currie would take the power to award health contracts away from the Department of Corrections and task the Department of Finance and Administration with soliciting proposals for a new contractor. VitalCore was awarded over $315 million in emergency, no-bid state contracts from 2020 to 2024. Currie said she does not want the Department of Corrections to resort to emergency contracts in 2027 when its current contract with VitalCore expires. “We want to move on,” Currie said. “We’ve been through this dark time, and we just want to make sure that we don’t sit around and wait and we end up having to have another emergency contract for the people that are in there now.” The House also unanimously passed a bill Tuesday authored by Rep. Justis Gibbs, a Democrat from Jackson, that would require the Department of Corrections to develop policies for supplying protective equipment when incarcerated people are forced to use strong cleaning chemicals. Gibbs introduced the legislation, which also passed the House last year but died in the Senate, in response to the case of Susan Balfour, a woman who developed terminal breast cancer after she came into contact with raw industrial chemicals during cleaning duty. Balfour died in August.  Other bills that were a part of Currie’s prison health reform package did not survive the first legislative deadline, including bills requiring medical kiosks for prisoners, redirecting funds for a prison health audit from a private law firm to the state’s legislative watchdog, and doing away with a requirement in state law that members of the Legislature must provide advance notice before prison visits.  The measures that survived now head to the Senate for consideration. The Senate Corrections Committee is chaired by Sen. Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg. Barnett told Mississippi Today he planned to meet with Currie and potentially advance the measures in his chamber. “We need to be more proactive because we have to realize that at the end of the day, most people in there are going to get out, and it’s best to let them out as healthy as we can versus letting very unhealthy people out into the general population,” Barnett said. Mississippi Today’s “Behind Bars, Beyond Care” series has documented potentially thousands of prisoners living with hepatitis C going without treatment, an untreated broken arm that resulted in amputation and delayed cancer screenings one woman said led to a terminal diagnosis. An ex-corrections official said people are experiencing widespread medical neglect in Mississippi’s prisons and turned over internal messages to Mississippi Today bemoaning the care provided by VitalCore Health Strategies, the state’s private medical contractor for prisons. “As a nurse, I went in and saw a lot of things that I can’t unsee,” Currie said. “And it breaks my heart every day that we haven’t had the gumption to go in and fix this.” ...read more read less